Petrogypsies (10 page)

Eventually the casing gypsies rejoined us, followed by the strangers we’d tangled with. They looked more racked up than us, of course, but not by much. Most of them grinned at us and we smiled back. No hard feelings. I didn’t see the fella with the eye-patch among them. We all settled down into a bunch of overstuffed couches and chairs that mostly looked out of a big floor-to-ceiling window onto the ocean. You could see lights scattered off along the bay, mostly ships at anchor, and close below the window, a small Driller making hole on a platform at the end of a granite jetty.

Mr. Pickett saw to it that we was all comfortable, then poured himself a dose of heart-starter into one of those big snifter glasses. He swirled it around and took a sip. Then he wandered over to the big window and pointed at the jetty rig.

“All the oil on this planet didn’t get buried under dry land,” he said. “But all of it that did, at least on this continent, and for fifty miles out from the coast, is under the stewardship of the godamnedest, greediest, most incompetent bunch of bureaucrats since the fall of the Roman Empire.”

“And it ain’t much better in any other country. Everybody taxes and regulates the oil producers, especially the independents, until it ain’t hardly possible to do business any more. Then they bitch about prices bein’ too high to suit ’em. Me and the rest of the board of Mesh Petroleum believe we’ve come up with a way to get outside the jurisdiction of the bureaucrats. A way to acquire some hydrocarbons without getting crippled by the regulations and taxes they impose. They’ve made it damn near impossible to play the game in their yard. So we’re gonna take our ball and play somewhere else.”

He took another sip of heart-starter. “Somebody’s got to be first to drill farther offshore than we can run these jettys. About fifty miles offshore, beyond the reach of the bureaucrats. How’d you folks like to help make oilpatch history?”

* * *

We left an hour and a half later. We’d made up with the sailors and had a time visiting with them and talking about their boat. We all voted to take T-Bone up on his proposition, and I looked forward to doing business with him. The tide was running in, and the crash of the surf sounded loud and clean. The salt air was plumb invigorating. The valet guy’s stool sat empty beside his booth when we went by.

“Just a second, sweetheart,” I said to Star. I checked my pocket and found a silver dollar.

I cast around and spotted him over in a corner of the lot beside a fancy car with its hood up. A Bugliosi or Masturbatto or some other kind of low-slung mafia car that would fall apart after thirty seconds off a paved road. This one apparently even had trouble in parking lots. The fella that had made the crack about me in the bar was bent over beside the valet guy, looking at the engine, while his date ground on the starter. It growled and whirred real healthy, but the engine wouldn’t kick over.

Me and Star moseyed over. I tossed the silver dollar to the valet guy when he straightened up. “That’s for being a sport about Sprocket and Lady Jane.” I looked at the guy who owned the car. “Need any help, mister?” Bygones, and all that.

“We’ll have it fixed in a minute,” he said, cold as a Baptist talking to a bootlegger. His date punched the starter again.

“Fine.” I took Star’s hand and we started to walk away. “I was you, though, I’d see if there was any gas in the tank before I run the battery all the way down.”

We caught up with the rest of the crew about halfway to the back of the lot. Star was still giggling at the look on the guy’s face when he found that his gas cap was gone. We figured some j.d. had sneaked in after it got full dark and siphoned his tank.

My attention got drawn off to the side when I saw something light-colored moving close to the ground in the dimness at the side of the lot. For a second, I figured it was the j.d. But it didn’t really look that much like a person. I touched Doc on the shoulder.

We veered over to the side of the lot to give it a closer examination. It was a gleaming white length of Sprocket’s drilling tongue, sliding along the asphalt like an albino anaconda. It shouldn’t have been where it was because Sprocket had parked more than two hundred feet further toward the back. In the dark, we couldn’t even see him from where we stood.

We traced the length of tongue, being careful not to step on it. It ran toward the entrance of the lot, passing in front of the noses of half a dozen cars. We got to the tongue-tip just as it turned in and ran beside a Packard convertible. The point of the main drill spear extruded from the tongue’s foreskin. The tip snuffled along the ground like a bloodhound on the trail of a fella that had left the obedience training school at Huntsville State Prison without graduating.

When it got near the rear of the car it lifted the last few feet of itself into the air and began to feel along the fender.

Doc and me bent over close to watch what happened next. Sprocket’s tongue found the rectangular crack of the gas tank cover. The tip carefully positioned perpendicular to it, then slipped into the crack and pried the lid up on its hinge. Then the tip receded inside the foreskin. The foreskin contracted into a sucker and tightly encircled the gas cap. Slowly, it flexed and twisted and rotated, unscrewing the cap. After a few seconds the gas cap came loose and vanished, sucked inside the drill stem.

The foreskin elongated and contracted in diameter. When it was about an inch across, it inserted into the gas tank. Shortly, the tongue silently began to pulse as fluid passed through it.

Doc straightened up. “The son of a bitch is sucking the tank dry! He’s a goddam vehicular vampire!” He looked wildly around the lot. “Jesus, Son of God! How many cars has he drained tonight?”

Me and Star and Sabrina about fell on the ground. Doc slammed the lid and Sprocket’s tongue jumped out right quickly, spewing gasoline all over Doc’s new suit.

When Sprocket danced past the little valet guy, every one of us on the crew poked out of our holes up top and tossed him a silver dollar apiece. We figured he had a long night ahead of him.

* * *

The best part of the evening had just started to start when Star pulled away from me. The camp lay quiet around us, and the hole in the ceiling of Star’s room perfectly framed the full moon. She threw the cover back and reached to the table bolted down beside the bed. A second later a phosphorus match flared and she slowly sucked into life the last of the Havanas she’d gotten at the Bali Room.

She rolled it back and forth between her fingers, staring at the glowing tip. “Henry Lee, do I act like a whore?”

Before I could say anything, she went on quickly. “I mean, this ain’t the first time a man’s called me names. I know I flirt around—” She blew out the match, but not before I saw tears tracing down her cheeks in the moonlight.

“Star …” I wasn’t sure what to say. “The problem is, you’re so much of a woman that it shines through every move you make. I think most fellas are blinded from the brightness of it. Maybe even scared by it, like I was for awhile. And some of the stupid ones can’t tell the difference between a real woman like you, and a whore, which is nothing but a empty woman-shaped machine made for separating a man from money.”

She wiped one cheek with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigar. “Can
you
tell the difference, Henry Lee?”

I reached over and wiped the other cheek. “You still make me blind and crazy both, but I’ve known for a long time that you’re the finest lady I’m likely to meet.”

“Aw, damn.” She put down her cigar and kissed me. “You’re so sweet. You sure make it hard for a girl to feel bad. Hold me awhile?”

About ten minutes later, she stirred from cuddling and straddled my chest. “You been so sweet, Henry Lee,” she said. “For you, tonight only, I’m gonna cut the price in half.”

Then, before I could quit laughing, she began to show me once more what a loving, real woman she was.

* * *

We loaded out on Mr. Pickett’s boat three mornings later. It had been dry-docked in Todd Shipyards for almost three months while they modified it to become the world’s first deep-sea drillship.

Sprocket went on board easier than any of us thought he would. It took only an hour of coaxing and music before he placed the first foot on the specially made heavy-duty gangplank that had been laid from the dock to the deck of the
Belle Butange
for his benefit. The sailors leaned over the rails and hooted while we cajoled him. Finally he trudged up it, grumbling in low C.

I got hung up with saying good-bye to Star, who’d come down with the rest of Lady Jane’s crew to see us off, so I didn’t ride on board with him.

When I did go up the gangplank, the action had moved mostly forward. Sprocket had been led to stand lengthwise along the keel of the ship, right behind this tower that jutted up about a third of the way back from the prow. Later on, I learned the tower was called the foc’sle, and contained inside it, split into four levels, the galley and the crew’s bunkrooms, among other things. The captain and his officers steered the ship in a big room at the top of the foc’sle, what they called the wheelhouse. It had thick glass all the way around, so they could see icebergs and other boats coming at them from any direction.

A couple of sailors still lounged on the rail near the gangplank, and waved back when I waved at them. One of them had a big purple bruise on his cheek. T-Bone had wanted us all to get acquainted before the cruise. I guess we did. Another sailor headed my way carrying a heavy coil of rope. He was looking back over his shoulder shouting something at somebody back beside Sprocket. It wasn’t until he faced in my direction that I saw the black patch that covered his left eye.

He’d left the Bali Room right after the fight, so I hadn’t had a chance to get straight with him. I angled so as to cross his path. He was already frowning when he turned, and it just got more sincere when he spotted me.

When we got within a few steps of each other, I stuck out my hand. “I’m Henry Lee McFarland, sir. I’d like to apologize for my part in the goings-on at the Bali Room the other night.”

I figured the fight had been mostly his fault, but I could have been a little less quick on the trigger myself.

He dropped the coil of rope to one side and scowled ferociously at me. “I don’t care if you’re Jesus’s bastard brother, lubber. You and me still have some settling to do.”

The four or five sailors lounging against the rail perked up and started paying attention to us.

I didn’t try to keep the smile on my face, but I spoke as evenly as I knew how. “Bad feelings won’t do neither of us any good, mister.”

He stepped up and prodded my chest with a forefinger and stared at me with one cold gray eye. “You better stay tight with your oilfield trash friends as long as you’re on my ship, lubber. I catch you alone some evening, you’ll be found scattered in pieces all over the Gulf.” While I watched his finger draw back for a last prod, he sucker-punched me in the gut, hard, with his other fist. It bent me over and he hit me in the mouth while I was down. The ring on his hand tore my lip.

Before I could react, a burly, bald-headed man stepped up and shoved us apart. The one-eyed sailor stumbled back and tripped over the coil of rope that he’d dropped.

“We’ll have none of that on board my ship,” the bald-headed fella said. The look on the sailor’s face indicated that he didn’t agree. The bald-headed man saw the look, too. “You have any doubt about it the purser will pay you off right now and you can be on your way.”

The one-eyed sailor glared at me one more time and then looked away. “No problem, Chief,” he said.

“Glad to hear it. You two shake hands now, and then you go about your business, Pegleg.”

Pegleg shook my hand, but I don’t believe he meant it. After he had picked up his rope and vanished belowdecks down a nearby stairwell, the bald-headed man grinned at me.

“Don’t mind Pegleg,” he said. “He’s hard to get along with only when he’s drunk or hungover.” He stuck out his own hand to be shook. “Of course, he’s always one or the other. So I guess it’s up to me to welcome you aboard the
Belle Butange
.
Or
Miz Bellybutton
, as we call her. Sorry I missed meeting you people the other night. I hear that a good time was had by all. I’m Chief Hightower. Head of the engine room crew on this tub.”

I shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, sir. Uh … that sailor. His name’s Pegleg?”

“That’s what everybody calls him.”

“But he ain’t
got
a pegleg. He’s got—”

“He’s got only one eye. And it would be terribly rude for anybody to draw attention to that fact.” The chief laughed. “So we call him Pegleg.”

* * *

The day stayed sunny, and the ocean stayed smooth. It took
Miz Bellybutton
six and a half hours to get to location, which turned out to be nothing more than a stretch of water identical to the rest. It was fifty-four miles from the nearest dry land. None of Mr. Pickett’s bureaucrats had a call to a penny’s worth of any hydrocarbons we might chance to discover out there.

The jetty rigs near the beach all had a circular hole cut into the center of the platform, through which their Driller could run his tongue to the wellhead. They called it the moon pool. I didn’t understand why until I looked down at one on a clear, full-moon night.